Social Psychology Flashcards
social psychology
Social psychology is concerned with how people influence other people’s
thoughts, feelings, and actions
how minds interact with each other
our long-term evaluations of
people are heavily influenced by
our first impressions
Nonverbal actions and expressions affect our first impressions:
How you initially feel about others will be determined mostly by
their nonverbal behavior (i.e., facial expressions, gestures, mannerisms,
and movements)
first thing we notice about another person
the face bc it communicates information, such as emotional state, interest, and distrust
eye contact is important in social situations, but how we perceive it depends on our culture
thin slices of behavior
Seconds-long observations offer powerful cues for impression formation
attributions
Explanations for events or actions, including other people’s behavior.
We’re
motivated to draw inferences in part by a basic need for order
and predictability.
A cognitive schema for an individual…
just world hypothesis
When bad things happen to people, we make sense of it by blaming
the victim—victims must have done something to justify what
happened to them
personal/internal or dispositional attributions
Refer to things within people, such as abilities, moods, or efforts
ex: that woman must be smiling bc she’s an upbeat person
situational/external attributions
Refer to outside events, such as luck, accidents, or the actions of other people
ex: that woman must be smiling because something good just happened
self-serving bias in making attributions about our own behavior
We attribute our successes to personal, permanent factors in a
way that gives us credit for doing well
We attribute our failures to situational, unstable, or
uncontrollable factors in a way that casts us in a positive light
ex: If you fail a test, you may blame your poor performance on not getting enough
sleep, or on the professor’s creating a bad exam; if you do well on a test, you may
attribute that good performance to your being smart
fundamental attribution error
Pervasive tendency to overemphasize the importance of personality traits and
underestimate the importance of a situation when explaining another’s behavior
stereotypes
based on automatic characterization
Cognitive schemas that help us organize information about people on the
basis of their membership in certain groups
- Allow for easy, fast processing of social information
- Occur automatically, largely outside of our awareness
- Affect impression formation
subtyping
When we encounter someone who does not fit a stereotype, we put that
person in a special category rather than alter the stereotype
ex: stereotype that all black people like watermelon; i don’t like watermelon; “not a real black person”
ingroups
groups we belong to
outgroups
groups we don’t belong to
ingroup favoritism
We are more likely to distribute resources to ingroup members than to
outgroup members. We are more willing to do favors for ingroup members and
to forgive their mistakes or errors
outgroup homogeneity effect
Once we categorize others as ingroup or outgroup members, we tend to view
outgroup members as less varied than ingroup members
ex: UCLA students may think that all Berkeley students are all alike, but notice the wide diversity of UCLA students
personal survival has depended on group survival
Keeping resources within a group while denying resources to
outgroup members may have provided a selective advantage
Robber’s Cave study
Sherif and his colleagues organized for 22 white boys from OKC to attend a summer camp at a lake
first week, each group lived in a separate camp on a different side of the lake and neither group knew the other existed
next week, groups competed in athletic tournaments
;ed to a lot of competition and animosity between the two groups; hated each other
phase 2: make them get along
sherif reasoned that cooperation should reduce hostility and so created situations in which members of both groups had to cooperate to achieve necessary goals
worked and the boyd became friends
results of robber’s cave
by introducing superordinate goals (goals that required people to cooperate) hostility is reduced btw groups
programs that most successfully bring groups together involve
person-person interaction
jigsaw classroom
Students work together in mixed-race or mixed-sex groups in which each
member of the group is an expert on one aspect of the assignment and then
return to their own groups and teach the material to their team members
800 studies of the jigsaw classroom have demonstrated that it leads to
more-positive treatment of other ethnicities and that students learn the
material better and perform at higher levels
attitude
people’s evaluations of objects of events or of ideas
People tend to develop negative attitudes about new things more quickly
than they develop positive attitudes about them
mere exposure effect
The more we are exposed to something, the more we tend to like it.
attitudes are acquired via
classical conditioning and operant conditioning
cognitive dissonance
An uncomfortable mental state due to a contradiction between two attitudes
or between an attitude and a behavior
ex: people smoke even though they know that smoking might kill them
people reduce dissonance by changing their attitudes or behaviors or rationalize the discrepancies
one way to get people to change their attitudes is to
change their behaviors first, using as few incentives as possible
ex: participants performed an extremely boring task and then reported to other participants on how enjoyable it was
participants who were paid more to lie about their experience reported enjoying it less
justifying effort
When people put themselves through pain, embarrassment, or discomfort to join
a group, they experience a great deal of dissonance
To resolve the dissonance they inflate
the importance of the group and their
commitment to it
ex: hazing rituals rely on cognitive dissonance to gain allegiance to a group
persuasion
The active and conscious effort to change an attitude through the transmission
of a message
elaboration likelihood model
a theory of how persuasive messages lead to attitude changes
When people are motivated and able to
consider information, they process it via
the central route= attitutude changes reflect cognitive elaboration
When people are either not motivated or
not able to consider information, they
process it via the peripheral route. As a
result, their attitude changes reflect the
presence or absence of shallow peripheral
cues.
For example, as a result of peripheral
processing, people may be persuaded
because the person making an argument is
attractive or a celebrity.
central route
Motivated/able to process information. Use of rational cognitive processes
leads to strong attitudes that last over time and that people actively defend
peripheral route
Not motivated/able to process information. Minimal processing of the
message; leads to more impulsive action
Zajonc’s model of social facilitation
Social facilitation can enhance or impair performance:
- If the task is relatively easy, the presence of
others will enhance performance - If the task is difficult, the presence of others will
impair performance
“the mere presence of other people will enhance the
performance in speed and accuracy of well-practiced tasks,
but will degrade the performance of less familiar tasks.”
social loafing
Sometimes, people work less hard when in a group than when working alone
ex: Six blindfolded people wearing headphones were told to shout as loudly
as they could. Some were told they were shouting alone and others were
told they were shouting with other people. Participants did not shout as
loudly when they believed that others were shouting with them
When people know that their individual efforts can be monitored
they do not engage in social loafing
bystander effect
the failure to offer help by those who observe someone in need
reasons for bystander effect
Diffusion of responsibility (social loafing)
- People fear making social blunders in ambiguous situations
- People are less likely to help when they are anonymous and can remain so
- People weigh the costs versus benefits of helping
conformity
Altering one’s behaviors and opinions to match those of other
people or to match other people’s expectations
informational influence
why we conform
Occurs when we assume that the behavior of the
crowd represents the correct way to respond
normative influence
why we conform
Occurs when we go along with the crowd to avoid
looking foolish
Asch experiment
A participant is asked to judge line lengths, in the
presence of a number of other ‘participants’,
who are actually confederates, secretly in league
w/ the researcher.
The confederates deliberately gave the wrong
answer a large proportion of the time
Participants ended up conforming to
the wrong answer
social norms
expected standards of conduct
groups tend to enforce conformity
those who fail to go along are rejected
milgram experiment
demonstrated that ordinary people may do horrible things when ordered to do so by an authority
averages
A computer program combined (or “averaged”) various faces without regard
to individual attractiveness. As more faces were combined, participants rated
the “averaged” faces as more attractive
symmetry
Most people find symmetrical faces more attractive than asymmetrical ones
relationships
Refers to connections with friends and romantic partners
proximity
How often people come into contact is a big determinant of relationships.
Proximity might have its effects because of familiarity: People like familiar things
more than unfamiliar ones
matching principle
The most successful romantic couples also tend to be the most physically similar.
People similar in attitudes, values, interests, backgrounds, and personalities tend to
like each other
kluver-bucy syndrome
Behavior associated with damage to the amygdala, whereby aggression is
toned down.
Removing the amygdala of normally very aggressive rhesus
monkeys caused them to become tame.
serotonin levels
In monkeys, enhanced serotonin activity lowered
aggression; interference with serotonin
increased aggression
In humans, low levels of serotonin have been
associated with aggression in adults and hostility
and disruptive behavior in children
frustration-aggression hypothesis
The extent to which people feel
frustrated predicts the likelihood that
they will be aggressive
culture of honor
Belief system in which men are primed to protect their reputations
through physical aggression
attitude specificity
the more specific the attitude, the more predictive it is
ex: Someone who says “I don’t really like music too much” is less likely
to actually dislike classical music than someone who says “I hate
music played by string instruments in concert halls”
postdecisional dissonance
Dissonance arises when a person holds positive attitudes about different
options but has to choose one of the options
ex: A person might have trouble deciding
which college to attend; the person might narrow the
choice to two or three alternatives and then have to
choose. Motivates the person to focus on one
school’s — the chosen school’s — positive aspects
and the other schools’ negative aspects
fundamental attribution error
Pervasive tendency to overemphasize the importance of personality traits and
underestimate the importance of a situation when explaining another’s behavior
actor/observer discrepancy
When interpreting our own behavior, we tend to focus on situations; when
interpreting other people’s behavior, we tend to focus on dispositions
explicit attitudes
Attitudes that a person can report
ex: People higher in self-reported (explicit) prejudice were indeed less
likely to vote for Obama
implicit attitudes
Attitudes that influence a person’s feelings and behavior at an unconscious level
ex: People who reported low levels of prejudice but whose scores on an
implicit measure indicated negative attitudes about blacks were also
less likely to vote for Obama
Deindividuation
A state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced
attention to personal standards
A state of reduced individuality, reduced self-awareness, and reduced
attention to personal standards
Self-awareness typically causes people to act in accordance with their
values and beliefs; when self-awareness disappears, so do restraints
People are especially likely to become deindividuated when they are aroused
and anonymous and when responsibility is diffused (e.g., rioting by fans)
altruism
Helping when it is needed without any apparent reward for doing so
From an evolutionary perspective, altruistic helping of others
with shared genes is beneficial
Through helping non-relatives, altruistic animals may also
increase the likelihood that other members of the social group
will reciprocate when needed (reciprocal helping)
prejudice
negative stereotype
Negative feelings, opinions, and beliefs associated with a stereotype
discrimination
Inappropriate and unjustified treatment of people as a result of prejudice
why do stereotypes lead to prejudice and discrimination?
- People treat others as scapegoats to relieve stress
- People discriminate against others to protect their own self-esteem
- We favor our own ‘groups’ and stigmatize other groups
being in a group influences decision making in complex ways,
both increasing or decreasing risky behavior
group polarization
The initial attitudes of group members determine whether the group becomes
riskier or more cautious
ex: Groups w/ individuals that start our risky often make riskier decisions
than individuals
Groups w/ individuals that start our cautious often make more
conservative decisions than individuals
groupthink
An extreme form of group polarization that results when group members are
particularly concerned with maintaining the group’s cohesiveness, above all.
self-fulfilling prophecy
Tendency to behave in ways that confirm our own or others’ expectations
ex: Teachers’ expectations of students’ success/failure can impact
those students’ performances
Women performed more poorly on a math test when they
were initially reminded of their sex
compliance
the tendency to agree to do things requested by others
foot-in-the door
compliance strategy
Start with a modest request, and then follow up with a larger request
door in the face
compliance strategy
Start with an unreasonably large request, and then they are more likely to
agree to a seemingly ‘more reasonable’ request
lowball technique
compliance strategy
Ask for a reasonable request, after they agree to it, change it up for a
larger demand
